No big New Year’s celebrations for Iraq’s displaced

Displaced Iraqi children have their picture taken while gathering for a New Year’s celebration at a camp east of Mosul.

Photo: Khalid Mohammed /Associated Press

BARTELLA, Iraq — There were no big New Year’s celebrations for the Iraqi men, women and children who narrowly escaped the fighting in Mosul, only to wait for hours under armed guard while the fighting-age males among them were cleared of links to the Islamic State.

The lucky ones would go with their families to one of the wind-swept camps for displaced Iraqis, where they will endure the remainder of northern Iraq’s bitterly cold winter in tents and learn to survive on insufficient supplies of food, heating oil and blankets.

Those whose names were found on the wanted list would be detained, interrogated and likely face trial.

Many of the Iraqis told of going hungry in Mosul for weeks, surviving on a single daily meal and drinking murky water extracted from recently dug wells. There was no formula for their small children, who survived on bread soaked in tea or soup made of rice or crushed wheat. Life was miserable without electricity or medical care. They watched mortar shells or stray bullets kill their relatives and neighbors.

They don’t know when they will go home, but are thankful.

“The camp is the lesser of two evils. Life in Mosul now kills you,” said 33-year-old English teacher Ahmed Abu Karam, from the ISIS-held Karama neighborhood east of the Tigris River. “What happens in 2017 is in the hands of God alone, but let me tell you this: My escape, thanks be to God, has given me a new life.”

Abu Karam was among about 200 men ordered by grim-faced Iraqi soldiers to squat outside a row of abandoned stores on a main road close to the mainly Christian town of Bartella near Mosul. It is the gathering point for the mainly Sunni residents who fled Mosul to avoid being killed in the crossfire between government troops and ISIS militants or because they ran out of food and money.

In one of the larger camps for the displaced in the Kurdish region, a local non-governmental organization provided a welcome change from the drab daily life there by throwing a New Year’s party for the children.

Camp resident Mustafa Mahmoud, a 21-year-old who quit school when ISIS took over his native Mosul in 2014, sees little to celebrate with the arrival of 2017. Since arriving at the camp six weeks ago, he goes to bed at 7 or 8 every evening. “Nothing will change tonight,” he said.